( Roughly ) 90 Days To Go In Campaign

New Monmouth University Poll shows the gulf widening between Jon Corzine and Chris Christie among ‘likely voters’ – 36% for Corzine versus 50% for Chrsitie ( a difference of 14 points for those of us, me included, who don’t add too quick ).

Asked the Governor about it today, and he quickly turned around and said that the same poll shows it narrowing among ‘registered voters’ – Christie only ahead 4% on that one, which is also true.

The Governor was highlighting uniform crime statistics in East Orange that show New Jersey on pace for a drop in violent crime for the third straight year. Stats through June ’09 show murder down 12% and violent crime down 7%. Non-violent crime did uptick a bit, but that part was dismissed by the Governor and crew as expected during a recession. I mean why don’t we just hand the scary guy our wallet to avoid having it taken, right??!!!

Elsewhere on the campaign front…Moody’s, the credit rating agency ( it’s funny, I thought these guys lost some credibility when they failed to detect danger among the nation’s largest banks which were tied up in subprime investments that were actually worthless ) put New Jersey’s credit rating on negative outlook.

In a nutshell, this means it could go down but it hasn’t. Republicans seized on the news. Reporters were bombarded with several press releases stating that this will hurt the state because bonding for infrastructure projects will become more epxensive if Moody”s goes forward with the downgrade. Also true.

But, I asked the Governor about that and he was quick to say that it hadn’t been lowered which should be viewed as a positive development given the country’s economic outlook. He added that many state governments still don’t even have budgets passed. And he reiterated that ( despite structural deficits ), He cut state spending which was unheard of for a NJ Guv in the modern era. Also kinda true.

So, we’ll have to wait and see on that one.

Finally, Christie has been out talking to business groups and giving them the kind of news one breaks out specially for such an audience which is “I’m gonna cut your taxes if elected.” We’ll have to see about that one also, I suppose.